This is a response to
Message 91 where we were off topic.
quote:
They don't have to have a fear of people being gay to think that liberalizing marriage will have negative affects.
True.
Good, then don’t call people homophobes and tell them that they hate gays and want to deny them rights because they don’t support gay marriage. I think when people do that they are being just as prejudiced as the people who really are homophobic.
But I think that denying people equal rights because something bad might happen is unacceptable in our secular constitutional democracy.
What rights are gay people being denied? Can those rights be given without changing marriage?
Be specific.
And I've really never been able to get anybody to elaborate upon what those "negative effects" will be.
Predicting the future isn’t very easy. Call it a hunch. Or here, read this
blog, if you will. There’s some elaboration on what the negative effects could be, I think.
quote:
I think its more of a worry about marriage, in general, which I guess is heterosexual, in general, but its not necessarily about the heterosexual part specifically.
OK, so do you think they are they afraid that hetero marriage will be destroyed or not, because your statement is very murky.
They? I dunno really. Me? No, I’m not afraid that hetero marriage will be destroyed. Marriage, in general, will be changed though and this I do not like. Hell, I probably would resist change in a lot of things, and like I said earlier, this is more of a liberal vs conservative thing than a religion/morality vs gays thing, IMHO.
quote:
I think he means that the liberal changes to marriage are gradual and the results are subtle. These are changes that I would prefer to not be made, too.
WHAT changes?
Be specific.
Be less demanding.
In some states, when you fill out a marriage license there’s one part for the Groom (male) and one part for the Bride (female).
Here is Hawaii’s marriage license if you don’t believe me. Now, I realize this specific change is not a big deal, you could probably draw a line through and make a correction for a gay marriage but it just goes to show that even on a very basic level, marriage will have to be changed to allow gay marriages. I’m sure there are other changes too, but I don’t really care about specifics. I was talking about the changes, in general, that would be liberalizing marriage, in general. I think liberalizing marriage is a bad idea and will have negative consequences and I don’t think we should change marriage to allow gay people to get married but I also don’t think we need to make an amendment to
prevent from getting married. It should just be something different altogether. This does not make me a homophobe nor do I hate gay people nor am I actively trying to deny them rights.
Look at
this.
quote:
Gay and lesbian couples have no constitutional right to marry in New York, .
Now, that article goes on to explain how gays
should have the right to get married, its just that the constitution does not grant them that right. More changes will need to be made.
Also, think of all the things associated with marriage as far as rights and privileges. These were written with the original idea of marriage (like Hawaii’s (between man and woman) in mind. I think they’ll be open to exploitation when marriage is changed to include gay people. I think we should not make the changes. If gay people are being denied rights, then those rights should be given in the areas where they are denied (thinking hospital visits here), from the article above, though, it seems that they don’t have the right to marry.
quote:
I think its the fear of change, or the desire for conservation that is at the heart of it, not a hate of gay people.
What it does in practice, though, is deny equal rights to homosexuals.
I think DOMA is bad and to actively say try to stop gays from getting married is denying them rights. But I don’t have a problem with not changing marriage and giving them something else.
If you say "it will be bad if gays marry" am I just supposed to say "Oh, well, if you say it's going to be bad, then it must be true."?
If you make the claim that allowing gays to marry will result in bad things, you should be able to elaborate upon what those bad things are if you want anyone to believe you.
Otherwise, you're just Chicken Little.
I’m not trying to convince you that you shouldn’t support gay marriage. I’m trying to get ”you people’ to stop spreading hate and calling people names because they don’t agree with you.
Sometimes the results are not easy to predict but I can still hold the opinion on whether they will be bad or good. I’m no economist, so I don’t know what specific changes will be the results of gay marriage WRT taxes, but I think there will be results and I think some of the results
will be negative and some
could be positive. While still leaving out specific examples of the results on taxes and thinking about some of the possibilities, I’d say lets just leave marriage the way it is and not change it to include gay people.
There’s other areas too, like health care. I can’t provide you with specific evidence like, if gay marriage is allowed then the results on health care will be
this. But I do think the effects will be negative. So still, I don’t think we should change marriage.
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